Step Inside Leanne Kilroy’s Elegant London Townhouse

I'm Leanne of Good Bones, and welcome to my townhouse in London. So now we're in the entrance hall of our Victorian terraced house, it's a townhouse, and we're going to go into the kitchen. So come with me. So we bought this house at the end of 2020, and when we did, it was a boarding house, so it was not in the best shape. It had been a family home for many years, but they were renting out all the rooms and they were kind of chopped up. So there are about seven bedrooms in the house. And this room where we are now was the kitchen, but it was significantly smaller. So we extended it to the side and to the back. And this was kind of the original Victorian kitchen. It was really cold and dark and had a lot of mold. And it just wasn't the best room in the house. So our first project was to extend to the side, which we did here, and to extend the back. And it just makes this kind of big, open kitchen dining, which we love. It's incredibly bright and it's our favourite place in the house. So it's a long story, but essentially before Good Bones, I studied law in Australia and I ended up leaving Australia and having to go back home to the US. So I couldn't really use my law degree. I couldn't practice law. So I ended up doing some legal marketing. It was super boring. And then my husband and I got married and we moved here. And I very quickly had some children. So we have three children and we added two more very, very quickly. So for about five years, I was essentially just a mother. And I loved it, but it wasn't kind of fulfilling my creative passion. So we we bought this house. I had so much energy for it. I was just like chomping at the bit to kind of renovate and do it myself and get my hands dirty. And and yeah, that's kind of what I did before Good Bones. It kind of just it just snowballed into a career and a community. And yeah, it's been a dream because we are living in England. It's known for its dismal weather. So it was super important to us to bring as much natural light in as we could. And you can see we added an entirely glazed roof. This was like the one North Star we had when we were doing this renovation. We knew this is what we wanted to start with. And we also knew that we wanted to have the kitchen live underneath the glass. I think a lot of people who do these kind of extensions in London, they tend to put the dining area under the glass. But I am a keen cook. I am always here at the stove or at the sink. And I knew that I wanted kind of the most important, hardest working place in the house to be really, really well lit and to feel how this indoor outdoor feel. You can see there's lots of other lights there. Oh, yeah. See what this looks like for you. Yeah, I mean, it's really beautiful. We have some vintage lights from Agapanthus, which is a lovely little shop. And we have a strip light here as well. I love a strip light. And it kind of that is more than enough light. The task lighting from the strip light and the kind of more ambient light from these is great. We also have two IKEA just clip on tertial lights. We have one here and we've got one down that end. And they are just kind of a little bit more fun, super easy. You can unclip them, take them off. And they provide super task lighting for the for the stove, the range cooker and for kind of that kind of working area down there. The layout changed completely. So this opening here, which now leads to our kind of playroom library, which I'll show you later, that used to be a window. And this area where I'm standing now is outside. So there was a wall here with a window. This was kind of a side alley. And the kitchen actually started all the way back here. This was the kind of where the kitchen began. We decided to add on some utilitarian parts of the house into this darker space here. It did make the kitchen smaller, but it gave us a coat closet, a downstairs toilet and a pantry. So three things that I absolutely would recommend anyone who can fit them in. I think it's worth losing a little bit of space for the things that are incredibly important. What's in the pantry? Oh, do you want to see the pantry? The pantry is it's one of the best parts of the house. So the pantry, not only is it pretty, it's just so, so hard working. So we have kind of all of our tea, coffee, breakfasty bits. And we have our beautiful matching arc kettle, which I just love so much. And our mocha master, which makes American style filter coffee. And then my husband, Eric's absolute favorite thing is the sage coffee machine, which is just incredible and enormous. Yeah, it's called Muga by Paint and Paper Library. And I I just love it. I'm not a huge bright color person in general. I don't do a lot of bright colors in my projects, but something like this, like a little jewel box, it's really, really easy and a great place to inject a ton of color. You can shut the doors and it's not there. And then when you open them, it's just a fun thing. We also have tucked under here a microwave, a toaster on that side. So everything kind of small appliance related is tucked in here. When you open up the doors, it very much feels like part of the kitchen. And then when you close them again, it feels very tucked away. So the island in our kitchen is perpendicular to the kitchen, which is kind of unusual, but we did it this way because of the location of the pantry and this island. It looks like a vintage piece that we found, but actually we had it made by the incredible Monkey and Bird. They make the most incredible pieces. They also restore antiques, but this is completely new and we kind of wanted it to look like an old shop counter. And I think they did an incredible job. How did they go about making it look sort of aged? So they added on these corbels and the beading and the molding and the bun feet. And they, I just asked for it to be black. I didn't specify a specific black. And then they kind of just worked on it and aged it, which is great for a busy household, because if someone knocks into it, if something happens, it doesn't really matter. It already looks like it's lived a million lives, so it's wonderful. And if you come on this side, I can show you kind of the ins and outs of it. I designed it to be the way it is because we have this really lovely collection of old Le Creusets that were either kind of from my parents or I bought them on eBay. And I love the flame color and how they pop. So I really wanted them to be on display. So we designed these shelves to fit them and to fit kind of things like baking trays and cutting boards. And we have like really useful storage in there as well. So it's a really beautiful piece, and it's also designed specifically for what we needed it for. The worktop was not included. So we put this worktop on after, and it's the same stone as the rest of the kitchen. It's a Bianco Eclipsia quartzite. I think it's from Brazil. So it's a natural stone, much like marble, but it's much harder wearing. So I really like marble in the kitchen, but my husband was like, that is not happening. It tends to scratch and stain, which I don't mind. But to play it safe, we decided to go with a harder wearing natural stone. A compromise. It's always a compromise. But this is an incredible slab. I love it very much. And it has a leathered finish, which just means that you can kind of feel the natural imperfections in the stone. Our amazing worktop guys, who I always use PGQ, they found the slab and fitted it for us. They put this beautiful OG edge on that kind of mimics the OG edge on this vintage apothecary that I got from my dad. So, yeah, this guy is my most prized possession. It is, I think, probably about 150 or 200 years old from Denmark. And my dad had, until the pandemic forced him to close, he had a Scandinavian furniture shop in Boston for 38 years. It was called Danish Country. So my whole childhood was just filled with amazing Scandinavian antiques. And this was one of them. So the house that we were raised in was full of kind of a rotating furniture because he had a shop. So things would come, things would go. And everything was there because he loved it. It wasn't because it would sell or because it had a certain provenance. It was because he loved it. And I think that kind of idea of furniture and the pieces in your house sparking a lot of joy in you, that is kind of how I live now. So this piece, I think I was like 21, I was like, I need to own it. I think it's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. And it's filled with all of the kind of crap that a family has, from batteries to shoes to napkins. So it's kind of the most hard working piece in the house. And I always joke that if there was a fire, I would it would be the one thing I would say. So obviously, I wouldn't be able to carry it. It's really heavy. And the cool thing about it also is that we can find one. Yeah, you can kind of see it here that all of the drawers have markings from what they were holding back in the days of when it was an apothecary. I was actually going to say, how do you know which one? Yeah, so I used to have a key. I used to have like a little map. But at this point, I think it's just imprinted in my brain. But yeah, it's an incredibly special piece. And I love it very much. And the OG, the original OG edge kind of talks to the new OG edge that we added onto the court site here. So now we're in the dining area, which is another extension that we added onto the kitchen. This originally was outside. We have more vintage furniture in this section. I really love mixing kind of vintage and modern. Also, it's often much cheaper and harder wearing. So, yeah, it just really works for a busy family. This table was in my dad's shop and I we brought it over from Boston. I love it. It has a lacquer on it. So our kids can't destroy it. And this incredible wavy settle I found on Instagram. Where else? From a vintage seller called Stowaway London that they have amazing stuff. And we kind of originally were thinking that we might put a built in bench in this section. But once I found that, we just knew that we needed to have it. So we kind of designed everything. I have no idea. Yeah, so cool. I it couldn't have been a church. It's way too fun. So I think maybe a pub. I genuinely don't know. But it is just incredibly, incredibly fun. It has some stories. It has some like weird scratching on it. Who knows? It's very cool, but also completely indestructible, which is helpful when you have a lot of kids. So another thing about this section is we wanted it to be kind of like a Victorian orangery. I have a lot of plants, as you can see. I love, love, love houseplants. I love gardening when the weather is a bit better. So I knew this place had to house a lot of greenery. So we have just massive wall of glass and and here as well. We wanted it to feel like it was sympathetic to the age of the house, which is probably the problem. It's probably from around 1895, something like that. Maybe 1885. Anyway, it's an old house. We don't have the exact record, but we added this kind of traditional glazing with lots of rails in order to make it feel sympathetic and less just like a box added on to the back. The plants kind of flow from inside to outside, so you've got the green on both sides. Yeah, exactly. And in the summer and the spring, most of these go outside. So we have the doors open quite a lot. The windows are open. And actually, almost all of these plants live in the garden most of the time. This little section here also is a funny kind of accident of the building job. So I knew that we needed a place to keep our glassware, our kind of not everyday glassware and things like, you know, extra wine and napkins and candles. So I found these doors on eBay and I asked my builders if they could kind of build in a cupboard here because we had this thicker new wall and this kind of thinner old wall. And there was going to be a step between them. So I wanted that step to kind of become something. But it was something was lost in translation, and I thought they were going to build it up and have it connect to the ceiling. But they didn't. So I had this funny gap on top. And actually, it's ended up being the perfect place for my rainbow candle collection. This candle sconce is a new addition to the kitchen. It's a collaboration between Feldspar Studio and Lucy Williams. And I just adore it. The candle is actually a really old candle I found in Denmark on a trip with my dad, and they just work really, really well together. So, yeah, I love candles and I love adding these kind of special things that I find as I go to the house. It kind of just makes the house full of things that I love. And I think that's what makes a house a home. Do you like collecting things? Yes. We just saw something arrive for a post. Yes, I do. I like collecting things. I also think that that kind of kind of collecting takes a really long time. You can't force it. And you just have to kind of wait for things to come. I mean, an example would be something like these pots. They were my parents' pots when they lived in Paris back in the 70s and 80s. And even if I did buy something like that, which would be expensive, you know, wouldn't have the same meaning that these pots have for me. So that's kind of my approach to decorating a home. Everything should ideally bring you a lot of joy and have a little bit of meaning or a memory. And yeah, that's kind of the way that I like to decorate my house. OK, so this is the true boss of the house. This is Kato. He is our five year old cat and he's a love bug. He does not like the cold weather, so he's almost always inside. Yeah. On the heated floors, we have underfloor heating in the kitchen. And he really, really, really likes it. I think we made it for him. So then this kind of part of the kitchen, this is the side of the pantry. And then this is behind the toilet, which is on the other side. And we have like many, many Victorian houses. We have a waste pipe that kind of runs down here. So this was just going to be boxed in kind of dead space. So what we did is we decided to use this space. Very messy in there. But it's kind of about this deep and it just stores all of our food. So from pasta to cookies to, you know, flour, sugar, all of that stuff lives here. It's a jib door, so it's quite hidden and it's just incredibly functional. And I'm I'm really happy that we use what otherwise would have just been lost space. Up here, we have what we call the library, but it's actually just a playroom. It is quite dark in here because it's kind of, you know, in the heart of the house, no natural light coming through. It's the middle room, which means it's the room that is often forgotten. These terrace houses usually have a front room, a middle room and then kind of the kitchen out the back. So in our case, we didn't want this to be the forgotten passageway to the kitchen. So what we did is we turned it into like a really hard working room, actually. So it holds all of our books. And I think it feels really lovely because it's completely full of books. But it also has the TV and all of the kids toys. So it's actually the room that they probably spend the most time in. So now we're in the formal kind of front room of the house. It has a big bay window. It has the original fireplace and it has incredible kind of cornicing and moldings. It also has the original picture rail, which we use. We kind of use picture hooks and ribbon to hang our art in here, which is wonderful. These double doors actually are not original. They were another eBay find of mine. I love to troll eBay at night. And I kind of whitewash them in the same way that I whitewashed the original skirting board and the the woodwork on the windows. And they're massive. So we actually had to have the builders place them off in an offset. They're not exactly centered on the wall because I knew I needed a piece of furniture to live in that in that alcove. So yeah, because oftentimes people do put doors here, but then it it prevents any furniture from going into the alcove. So we had to be really strategic. And this room has a mix of kind of mid-century furniture and and kind of more antique Scandinavian furniture. We have this really, really, really beautiful Victorian fireplace. It's a job we haven't really gotten to yet in the house. It's a beautiful Carrara, maybe marble. The original tiles, which are kind of not in the best shape, original insert, which someone at some point has cemented up. So this might be a project we take on in the near future. I would love to put a working fireplace in here, but that will be maybe for next winter. Upstairs landing, all of these Victorian terrace houses have kind of rooms piled on top of each other. And then they often have this thing called an outrigger, which is where we are now. And that would be kind of the the little L-shaped added onto the back of the house. And underneath us is the original kitchen. So we're very lucky in that our outrigger has a pitched roof. So we have a skylight here and it's bringing a lot of light and we've pitched the roof up throughout. So we've kind of removed the false ceiling and it just gives this otherwise very small space, a sense of height. And and yeah, just more airiness and more space. Because we are American, we knew we needed a laundry room and we knew we needed one kind of closer to the bedrooms, which is the traditional place to put them in the US. So we carved a utility out of out of the landing. And it's incredibly useful. We have a washer and a dryer and we have a sink that I bought after a few too many glasses of wine on eBay one night. And it's lovely. As you do, as you do. Yeah, I just put a bit up and fell asleep and it was my my sink in the morning. And through here is our home office. When we bought the house, it was the only bathroom in the house. It had really low ceilings and an enormous kind of corner tub that was full of mold. It was a really unpleasant room. So we pitched the ceiling up and we left some of the beams and decided to paint everything in this kind of lovely mid brown. The reason for that was a lot of the brick. So it was a bathroom that was a brick bathroom. It was a bit odd, but we decided to leave a lot of the brick exposed and paint some of it and and leave the rest of it. And I just really like the mix of materials that we have. This light was actually in my parents garage for a really long time. And I think my dad had never managed to sell it. So it's mine now. And I love it. It's a rise and fall. I claimed it. It was still in the box. It's it kind of goes up and down. It's it's really, really cool. I actually think I've hung it incorrectly. It's supposed to be this rise and fall mechanism is supposed to be kind of closer to the wall, but I like it this way. I like the the way that when you walk into the room, you see the beautiful silhouette. My husband generally works from this room because it's a little bit dark for me. I need to see all my samples and have everything out in front of me. And we've just made this desk for him. Our builders kind of cut pieces of birch ply and I stained them. And we just designed the boxes to fit the printer and the waste paper basket and things like that. So definitely a DIY piece. And yeah, in general, this room is kind of dark and cozy. And I hope one day, maybe when our kids have left or we have some more rooms to play with, that this could be the TV room. I just imagine it would be amazing with kind of a big cozy sofa and a TV because it's so dark and cozy. So our kind of primary suite is divided into three sections. We have a wardrobe area. We have our bedroom area and we have our en suite bathroom. We did this project last year. It was our most recent project. This was a big primary bedroom. And this the bathroom behind me was another bedroom where our youngest daughter slept. We decided to divide the bedroom into two different sections, but maintain this kind of circular flow. So we wanted a bedroom that felt a little bit more intimate and cozy and that had a nice outlook. So so often you end up kind of putting wardrobes in front of the bed and then you're looking at a wall of wardrobes. We wanted instead to look at a beautiful wall with a fireplace and beautiful pieces of furniture. So we built a kind of wardrobe that is four sided and it serves as the wall that our bed sits up against. And we actually found this fireplace on the street in 11 different pieces. I made my husband carry it home. Yeah, he was super not happy. It was just on the road, the whole thing. Yeah, I was actually so it was missing one piece. We had an amazing restorer who added that piece, but you would never know. Even the insert, everything was there. We actually didn't own this house when I found it. I just am a freak. And I we stored it in our basement for years until we had a home. So if you find a fireplace, just take it. Just always take it is the answer. And in this corner, we have my special spot in the house. It's my vanity. It's kind of where I sit every morning and I give myself 10 minutes just to like put on my face cream and makeup and feel like I have just a time that's just for me. I really, really love this vanity. It was a another Instagram find, Shiny Things London. They they tend to have a lot of these. So definitely have a look. It has a beautiful old weathered Carrara top. And I love it. Now we're going to go into the bathroom. We put in this doorway between the two rooms. This was where Domino, our youngest, used to sleep. We wanted this bathroom to feel like another room of the house. We didn't want it to feel too cold or to kind of clinical and clean like bathrooms often feel. So we actually really did work on the layout of this room quite a lot. There were so many different iterations. We ended up with the iteration, I think, really, really work. So we have a freestanding bathtub, another eBay vintage find. And we each have our own sink in the alcoves. It's just I don't know. It just feels special and it feels kind of luxurious to have these special distinct sink spaces. They're identical. And I don't know. They don't we don't swap. But that one's mine. That one's his. And yeah, there's something really lovely about it that we each have our own space. Another part of this bathroom that I absolutely adore is this enormous walk in shower. It's micro cement by the wonderful Connor of CMG. And it is huge. So we don't all go in there, but we could if we wanted to. And it has a little bench in there. It's just a really, really nice place to have a shower. And I asked my kids recently what their favorite part of the house was. And two out of three of them said it was a shower. So we designed it so that you could wash, you know, kids, dogs and old people. I know that sounds funny, but we do have parents. And as they age, we thought if when they come to visit, it might be really helpful for them to have a walk in shower. So another thing I love about this bathroom are bespoke radiators. We have two of them. When I was designing the bathroom, I was looking for unlacquered brass rads to match the unlacquered brass that we have throughout. And I couldn't find an option that was kind of a bespoke size that wasn't going to completely blow the budget. So I found an E- no an Etsy seller, not an eBay seller, an Etsy seller who makes kind of copper pipe rads. He's called Bow Street Interiors, and he's really wonderful. And we had two of them made to measure. They're plumbed in, so they're super hot. They dry our towels instantly. And I also think they're just really, really beautiful. They will age and patina over time. And I love that. Another thing about this bathroom that I adore is the marble. So we used PGQ again. And this time I went to go see the marble in person. My friend actually bought two. So we bought two slabs and she bought two slabs for her kitchen. So we have like twin twin marble. It was kind of the big splurge of the bathroom, but it completely transforms it. So we have massive marble backsplashes behind each sink, a marble mantle. We just put it kind of everywhere. And when this room was part of the boarding house that this house was, there was a desk in here. So there is a big gap behind and I didn't want to lose the functionality of that gap. So this actually opens up. Wait, I'm not going to show you what's in there. Well, I will very quickly. Boop. It's kind of all of the toilet paper, all of the deodorant, the toothbrushes, all of that stuff lives there. Yeah, I know. People always ask, where's your toothbrush? Everything is in there. And it just is a way that we can keep everything quite clean and tidy and have an absolute ton of storage in there. One of the things that I love about this setup is the flow. So we're leaving the bathroom now, walking back into the dressing room, which also connects to the bedroom. And I just love that the bathroom has two entrances. So you can kind of enter through the bedroom, exit through the hall. And our dressing room is kind of the same. So you can kind of come into the bedroom dressing area and go straight into the bedroom or you can come in here. So we built this joinery last year and we designed it specifically for our needs. So we have a his, her, his side, a her side and lots of drawers. All of our kind of medicine and things live here. We made this a bit more shallow so that the door could open properly. And then we also dropped down the last set of cupboards so that it wouldn't obstruct the window. And it forms this lovely vignette, I think, with a mirror and the light coming through. And I think it's really beautiful. I painted this in a kind of, I call it a custom color, but it's actually just a mix of two different colors because I was obsessed with finding the right kind of burgundy. So it's half a RAL color, RAL 3004, which is my favorite red. And I use it everywhere mixed with Scarlet and Rust, which is a paint and paper library color. That's very, very beautiful. We have these really pretty pooky lights with the rattan shades and they cast a lovely, lovely shadow on the wall. And then the entire room and these wardrobes is painted in, I believe it's Wayfinder by Atelier Ellis. And it's lovely. And so the flow of this room is really special. You can kind of walk all the way around the wardrobe bed section. So no one is ever at a dead end. And I really don't like dead ends in design. I like to be able to keep flowing and walking. And I think it makes for a much more like pleasurable experience in the room when you never have to turn around and go out the way you came in. So on this floor, we have two bedrooms and a bathroom. The bedrooms belong to Vesper, who's eight, and Domino, who's six. I kind of just let them do their thing in there. They're very, very sweet rooms and they really show their personalities. And then through here, we have the girls bathroom. When we moved in, this room was actually a kitchen for the boarders who lived upstairs. So it was bright orange. It was really kind of disgusting. And we actually used it as our kitchen when we did the renovation downstairs for about eight months. So we're very grateful that we had it, but also very grateful to get rid of it. Because this is a bathroom for four girls, we decided just to lean to lean right in. So we painted it pink. We've got some burgundy and pink kind of accents everywhere. This shower curtain was made bespoke by Colors of Arley, and it's brilliant. We used my favorite red again, RAL 3004 on the door and the doorframe. And then we kind of filled the room with vintage pieces, because, again, I really dislike bathrooms that feel too cold and clinical. So we have a vintage piece here that holds our eldest's toiletries and makeup. And we've got another little vintage piece there. And it's just a room that, again, feels kind of warm and inviting. We have the timber floors. It's just not too precious and it's not too cold. We have this lovely sink from Burlington, just really inexpensive. But I think it's very sweet and and feminine. And we've just got some silly art on the walls. And yeah, just a fun room with with a lot of personality. So up here, we actually have two more bedrooms in the bathroom, but we just haven't really gotten there yet. So it's a big house. We're kind of taking it in stages, and I'm currently planning the next stage, which will be upstairs. You're obviously very passionate about period properties. So for somebody who was equally as passionate about wanting to invest in something like this, would you be a bit overwhelmed by how much work goes into creating a home that's modern enough to live in? What would you say? Would you do it? I would definitely do it. Definitely do it. Just remember, you have to take it in stages. Well, no, you don't have to. Most of us have to take it in stages. I actually think having kind of budgetary restrictions, time restrictions, having to live in the property when you renovate, these can all be blessings in disguise. It means that you have to kind of be more laser focused. You have to kind of decide based on things out of your control, which actually can make decision making a lot easier, I think. And once you've lived in a property for a long time, you have a much better sense of what you need out of the property and the flexibility you want out of it. So, yeah, I think definitely go for it. Just take it in stages. I started my Instagram, Good Bones London, when we moved in about four and a half years ago now. And I started it because I really was looking for a community with fellow renovators and people who cared about homes and decor and just like the DIY aspect of renovating. And my family didn't care at all. So I was so lucky I have now an amazing community around me. And I think I kind of joined in order to get information. And now I feel I'm lucky enough to be able to be giving it. So it's pretty amazing. And from that has come my career as an interior designer and also just a creator in other kind of aspects. I love to write. I love to take photos and put them on my Instagram. So it's a really happy place for me. And I feel super lucky that this house kind of created that. So where are you from originally? I'm originally from Boston in the US. My husband and I grew up there together. So why London? Why London? I guess why not London? So it's a kind of a long story. I went to university in Canada, then I moved to Italy and then I moved to Australia. And when I came back to the US in my late 20s, I just didn't feel like it was the place I wanted to be. Not because I don't love it. I adore my family, my friends in Boston and the US in general. But I just loved the feeling of being a foreigner. So we actively chose to move abroad. And for all sorts of reasons, passports and everything. England made a lot of sense for us. And London is just an incredible place to live. And we feel really privileged to have our three girls growing up here. It's just an incredible city. That's it for the tour. Thank you so much for coming, Luxury Home Show. If you want to see more of me, I'm on Instagram at Good Bones London. I'm always posting about the house, about interiors and DIY stuff. So please check me out there. And thanks so much. Bye.